Rural Development
MINISTER for Forest and Soil Conservation
Gopal Man Shrestha reiterated the commitment of His Majesty’s Government for the
uplift of social and economic condition of the people living in rural areas through
accelerating the pace of local development. Inaugurating the 17th general meeting of
Village Service Family in Syangja district the other day, Minister Shrestha said that
since the all-round development of the country cannot be attained without the development
of the backward and remote areas, the government has placed more emphasis on carrying out
development works in the village and local level. Nepal is a rural country with more than
75 per cent people living in villages and country’s development depends upon the
level of development in the rural areas. Realising this need, His Majesty’s
Government has accorded high priority to local development. The allocation of more than 70
per cent of the national budget to the development of rural areas is an ample example of
its commitment and seriousness to local development. The government has adopted the policy
of encouraging and enabling local people and local authorities to carry out development
activities. Thus, the concept of decentralization has been implemented. Experiences have
shown that planning, designing and implementing development projects from the centre have
not been successful in catering to the developmental needs of the local people. Only local
people know what their needs are and can properly and effectively monitor the development
activities in their areas. Moreover, decentralisation builds capability of the local
people and their representatives, empowers them to identify their needs, and plans,
designs, operates and monitors development projects in accordance with the need of the
local areas. After the restoration of multi-party democracy 11 years ago, the government
has given more emphasis on decentralization and empowerment of local authorities. The
Local Self Governance Act has empowered local authorities to carry out all these
development related activities and sought to genuinely promote decentralization. However,
local representatives have demanded more power and authority for making decentralization
more effective and meaningful. Since the prime objective of democracy is to strengthen
people’s power and make the people master of their own destiny, genuine
decentralization translates this objective into a ground reality. An accelerated pace of
rural development is, therefore, a must for the sustainable development of the country,
for which more focus has to be laid on creating human resource at the local level and
building capacity of local bodies and people’s representatives.
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